Posts Tagged ‘Saudi Arabia’

In this post I present developments in world crude oil (including condensates) supplies since January 2007 and per July 2017.

In this post the world crude oil (inclusive condensates) supplies is split into three entities, North America [Canada, Mexico and the US], OPEC(13) and other Non OPEC [World – {North America + OPEC(13)}] with a closer look at Brazil.

For OPEC(13) a closer look at developments of number of active oil rigs versus developments in the oil supplies. This is supplemented with developments in the oil supplies versus the number of active oil rigs for some selected OPEC countries.

Looking at figure 07 for OPEC(13) the increase in its supplies as of late 2014/early 2015 followed a period with noticeable growth in oil rigs and likely capacity expansions/modifications of oil process/treatment facilities.
The accompanying increase in OPEC(13) supplies may simply have been rationalized from a pure business desire to recover the investments (CAPEX) from these capacity expansions.

Finally a closer look at developments in petroleum consumption/demand and stock changes for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
The OECD has about half of total global petroleum consumption and a major portion of the global petroleum stocks.

“It took a lot of costly oil to bring down the oil price. This is the magic from lots of cheap credit.”

Figure 01: Figure 1: The stacked areas in the chart above shows changes to crude oil supplies split with North America [North America = Canada + Mexico + US], OPEC and other non OPEC [Other non OPEC = World – (OPEC + North America)] with January 2007 as a baseline and per July 2017. Developments in the oil price (Brent spot, black line) are shown against the left axis.

It was the oil companies’ rapid growth in CAPEX leveraged by cheap debt [ref US Light Tight Oil (LTO)] and expectations of a sustained higher oil price that brought about a situation where supplies started to run ahead of consumption/demand that brought the oil price down. During the run up to the oil price collapse, supplies also grew from other non OPEC (ex North America) from developments sanctioned while the oil price was high and expected to remain so.

Following the oil price collapse several of these developments had to take considerable write downs.

This coincided with increased OPEC supplies in what became widely explained as a bid from OPEC for market share.

As analysts and pundits keep staring into their crystal balls searching for clues to future moves in the oil price, it may be more helpful to look at some actual developments that may explain the recent strong US stock builds, developments in US total petroleum consumption and what this now may presage about future oil price movements.

In this post I present a closer look at the recent growth in US total petroleum demands split into:

Development in US total petroleum consumption (inclusive some selected products)

Rate of stock build of US commercial crude oil stocks

Then a look at developments in crude oil supplies from OPEC where several of the big oil producers in the Middle East have had strong growth in the number of oil rigs since early 2014. Recent media reports about increases in oil supplies from the biggest Middle East oil producer.

Figure 01: The chart above shows developments in the oil price (Brent spot), blue line and left hand scale [The oil price has been multiplied by 4 to fit the scaling on the left hand scale]. The thick black line shows the weekly EIA reported total inventory of US commercial crude oil stocks, left hand scale.The thin gray line plotted versus the right hand scale shows the daily changes to crude oil inventories from weekly EIA data.The thick red line plotted versus the right hand scale is a trailing 28 days moving average of changes to the crude oil inventories.Stock draw downs adds to supplies and may moderate price growth for some time.Figure 02 has zoomed in on the recent developments.

In Q1 2014 the average daily US stock build was 0.29 Mb/d and during Q1 2015 the average US daily stock build was 1.10 Mb/d.

Demand for US stock build was up 0.8 Mb/d year over year. This stronger stock build temporarily adds to (global) demand and supports the oil price.

What drives this strong stock build is the price spread between contracts for prompt/front month deliveries versus contracts for later deliveries when the futures curve is in what is referred to as contango, refer also figure 3.

The recent strong builds in US crude oil storage may give away some clues about underlying developments in consumption.